Vessel: The Nature and Aesthetics of Design

David Pye muses on the abilities of designers in creating. Written in 1964, Pye discusses that limitations in design com from our inability, finances, and not of technique. We have grown since our cavemen days of finding pieces of wood that are the size and shape we need, we have techniques to process, waste, form, and connect a piece together almost anything. We have shortcoming in our abilities, its hard for us to handle extremely small or massively large materials, but we have come a long way in our creation of synthetic materials. Our ability to create flat surfaces and attach them together is underappreciated; our construction techniques allow us to connect with the world around us.

Pye switches gears and discusses art, he states that what we find beautiful in nature connects us to it, art connects us with the artist whether or not they are living, and that art connects generations to future generations. Design is a force in which to improve human happiness, by physical comfort, aesthetic beauty, or otherwise. The beauty in design, according to Pye, is essentially art. He goes into a more philosophical rumination over human purpose and ability, in regards to art he states that it is a birthright and generations need to cultivate art for their children. For example, the wars throughout history have been emotionally documented by artists and give us a piece, feeling and sharing of emotion that conveys the tragedies for generations. Pye gives us wisdom, “… so long as there is hope there will be art…”, and a feeling of importance for what we create in art and design.  

            I think this reading had two main ideas. The first part revolved around wood working and creating by hand, the second a more philosophical essay on the importance of art in society for its ability to connect generations and pass a story infinitely through time. I really enjoyed his ideas on art and design, and will be able to justify the importance of design in a new way. 

Vessel: Construction

Working in the shop is not my strong suit. Luckily I only sanded some skin and nail off and not my entire finger. Work is coming along, and though I'm making a lot of mistakes, I am learning a lot more than I thought I would and am feeling more competent than when we began. It's starting to look like the end product!

Vessel: Construction

After the horrifying safety instructions and test cuts, today we started making the wood model and getting wood glued together. It wasn't too bad today, luckily I got my block dried before class ended- but the hard part is coming!

Vessel: Three Models and Concept Statements

Ring Box-

            This interactive vessel simply contains stacked personal rings in a modern, minimalistic form.

Column Stacked Boxes-

            This interactive vessel contains stacked, interchangeable storage for a multitude of personal rings through a modern, minimalistic form.

IPhone Dock-

            This vessel displays a phone, changing its use to be like a traditional alarm clock, allowing for it to be charged and sound amplified through a modern, minimalistic form. 

Vessel: Inspiration Materials

Yes, its a Pinterest screenshot. My favorite resource.

Thinking seriously about what type of wood to use, its been great looking at different artificial and natural resources. I think doing an exterior or natural, rough wood like in the photos below could add a wonderful rustic touch. On the other hand, since we have to create the vessel in a shop and are supposed to sand it down, it might be cool to add in artificial elements like laser cutting or glass/plastic inserts like in the photos below.

Vessel: Inspiration

Before every project I need to look at examples to get the creative juices flowing. After a lot of fairly uninspiring googling, Gabby gave me the name of a great artist that does amazing and unique woodworking in class today. I hope to incorporate some of Christoph Finkel's simplicity and elegance into the designs for my vessels.

http://www.finkel-bowls.com/

Photography: David Hockney and Joiner Photography

While getting ready for the South Bank Show, Hockney lets a camera crew follow his motions in creating a new piece. His joiner photography attempts to create photography with greater feeling of time and space, opposed to traditional photography or video. Hockney says that joiner photography captures a scene better than a video camera and challenges the crew to capture a scene with video and then with joiner photography. After they capture the same moments in a traditional camera, develop the photos and Hockney assembles them (even though two rolls were destroyed in the process), they compare the methods. The joiner photography captures all of the elements in the ten-second scene at the same moment. The viewer can look back and forth between elements of the piece and never lose the other elements. The video, however, does not allow for you to stop looking at the subject, Fredda, to look at a tree and then go back to the subject, it goes all at once.

Hockney felt a dissatisfaction with traditional photography, the lack of time shown in the frozen, unreal, lifeless motion. In painting, you can tell that there are hours and hours put into completing the work, but with photography you take it in fractions of a second. The viewer looks at the setting for longer than the camera does.

Joiner photography creates the illusion of space, but the feeling of time that it creates is real, you know it took time to create the larger image of several photos of the scene, shown in Hockney’s works of his home, or the Crossword Puzzle.  You can manipulate the many photos to express what is happening in the moment, or the character of the people in the photographs.

Watching this segment was really helpful and cool to see David Hockney at work, he was a little brash but he makes really great work. I think the purpose of watching this video was to explore the idea that this technique of creating joiner photography could contain more power in expressing a moment that video, which before I saw this I thought was obviously the best way. And we are trying to emulate his style in a way, literally or an interpretation, so I think it was really valuable to see more of Hockney’s work.